Re: Uusisuom, Unilang, auxlang discussions in CONLANG

En réponse à Daniel44 <Daniel44@...>:

> Dear Oskar,
>
> It was of course inevitable that I should feel obliged to write a reply
> to
> your curious comments.
>
> You call Uusisuom 'another obscure conlang'. It's worth mentioning here
> that
> EVERY conlang, including Esperanto is obscure to the vast majority of
> people
> in the world.
>
Well, maybe the language is obscure to many people, but the name Esperanto is
known to a lot of people all around the world (not only in Western countries),
or at least more known than most other conlangs, artlangs or auxlangs, including
Uusisuom. Not that I want to begin a flame-war about anything, I just want to
put things in perspective.

>
> 'While at best a naive auxlang'. Well, I'm not sure what to make of this
> comment.
>
Well, as a person who cannot hear the difference between the "u" and "y" of
Uusisuom (like approximately 3/5 of the world population, lowest approximation
of the number of people in the world who don't differentiate those two sounds in
their native langs), and seeing how much trouble it gave even to English
speakers, I think that an auxlang that leads to such kinds of problems is well
defined as "naive". Don't take it as an insult, but as a constructive criticism
which means: "you can improve it".

> Auxiliary languages can be successful, depending on various things:
>
> - original and appealing design
> - exhaustive promotion
> - ease of use and fun to learn
> - community spirit among speakers
> - well run organisation
> - various publications etc.
>
Agreed. Indeed, that's pretty much why Esperanto is successful, or at least more
successful than other auxlangs (especially due to the 4th point).

> To be honest, I am not interested in studying more linguistics. I have
> found
> many linguists to be tedious, back biting and pretentious and I know
> enough
> of languages from my own study (as was the case with Zamenhof) that I
> have
> the confidence to create and promote my language.
>
Well, the fact that "many" (be careful, this list is full of linguists who are
far from tedious, back biting and pretentious) linguists behave the way you
describe doesn't mean that linguistics itself is worthless. Even Zamenhof could
be considered as an amateur linguist, like many of us.

> I am not interested in 'improving' Uusisuom for the same reasons that
> Zamenhof largely rejected demands to 'improve' Esperanto.
This I cannot let pass. I really have to correct this untruth. I don't want to
begin a flamewar, but just to correct what you said, just by stating the
historical facts. Saying the Zamenhof largely rejected demands to "improve"
Esperanto is not only incorrect, but rather insulting for a man who spent the
next 15 years after he published his first booklet about "la lingvo internacia"
asking for comments and criticisms in order to improve Esperanto for
international communication. He was ready to change everything that he was said
was not fit, and that includes a lot: giving up with the accusative ending, or
at least make it optional, giving up with the agreement between noun and
adjective, make the language more gender-neutral by adding a 3rd person
genderless pronoun, make the stems genderless and create a suffix for masculine
gender (yes, even in 1900 it was already a problem, and Zamenhof was ready to
correct it), modifying the function of the verbal participles, changing the
plural marking, etc... His only requirement was that the changes would have to
be accepted by the majority of the Esperantists, since he knew that languages,
even auxlangs, are merely a convention between speakers and that only if the
majority of speakers agree on it, it can work. That's why during one of the
first Universalaj Kongresoj (I don't remember which one), a vote happened, where
Esperantists had to choose between an Esperanto close to the original of the
booklet of 1887, a Reformed Esperanto with all the proposed changes, or
different shades of changes in between. The voters had agreed that whichever
form of Esperanto would win would be the definitive one which would be taught
later (that in order to preserve the stability of the language. It had to stay
this only until there would be enough speakers that the language could not be
destroyed simply by personal innovations). Zamenhof had already given up his
rights as creator of the language and said that he would obey the majority, as
any simple Esperantist, and that he wouldn't vote nor give any opinion on what
should be done. An overwhelming majority voted for an Esperanto nearly without
changes and that's why the Esperanto which is spoken now is mostly like the one
which was published first by Zamenhof. Even after that, Zamenhof sensed very
early the signs of what would be the crisis that would lead to the break of the
Esperantist community into two groups and the creation of Ido, and again
proposed innovations, most of them the ones he had already proposed before the
vote. Among all Esperantists, he was the most innovative one, the most eager to
make Esperanto into the most suitable tool for the majority. It's far from you
view that he "rejected" demands to improve Esperanto. On the contrary, he was
the first to ask for them. The only reason why it never worked was because the
majority didn't want those changes.
That's quite different from the attitude of Schleyer (or Schreyer? cannot
remember his name), the inventor of Volapük, who rejected all comments and
criticisms ever on his language and used his property rights to have all reform
attempts failed. This stubborn attitude is the main reason why the community
that had been created around Volapük finally broke apart and abandoned the
language, except for a few ones faithful to the abbot, and the main reason why
Volapük failed as a universal language.

Now I think you should meditate on those two stories (you can easily check them,
I didn't tell any lie) before saying that you are not interested in 'improving'
Uusisuom.

 The language
> is
> interesting, appealing and sufficiently easy and fun to learn and use to
> satisfy my objectives.
>
"Your" objectives. you just said it. It satisfies "your" objectives. the problem
is that an auxlang is not there to satisfy one person but a whole community.
Zamenhof had understood that, Schleyer hadn't. Esperanto had the biggest
community of speakers of all IALs, Volapük one of the smallest. Draw your
conclusions yourself.

> I admit freely that Uusisuom is not a perfect language (show me one that
> is), but that does not make it 'naive' and I resent such a comment.
>
It depends on what you mean by "naive". How long did you work on the language
before publishing it? How long did you think about it before writing anything?
If you take "naive" as "in its infancy", then I don't know what's insulting
about this comment.

> From what I can gather, criticisms of Uusisuom come from those who are
> quick
> to judge and even quicker to criticise. I have not simply picked at bits
> from other languages, nor have I attempted to copy an existing auxlang.
> Uusisuom is my own creation and design, and as its father I will be
> happy to
> watch it take its first steps and stumbles along the path towards, I
> believe, significant success.
>
That is exactly the attitude of Schleyer towards the ones who were asking for
reforms of Volapük. Nobody knows if the reforms asked by the Volapükists were
founded are not. Still, the simple fact that Schleyer simply never wanted to
hear about them was enough to destroy the movement that had begun to appear
around the language.

Take this as a friendly advice: put your pride a little aside and don't reject
all comments because your language is good enough for you. Maybe you're right
and Uusisuom doesn't need any improving (I don't have an opinion about it), but
the point is not there: if you want to make it a successful IAL (and from what
you're claiming that's what you want), it will have to be accepted by a lot of
people, not only a few friends, and to do so you'll have to make concessions,
even if they are temporary. Look at the example of Zamenhof: his language was
accepted with nearly no modification, but that was only because Zamenhof never
rejected any comment or critics, and let the users and learners decide what they
wanted.

I wish you good luck with the spreading of your auxlang, and I really hope for
you that you will succeed.

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

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